Hey everybody!

Well we had another very busy week with transfers, taking departures home, and picking up the new missionaries. It all went pretty smoothly for the most part, except for some missionaries forgetting to bring a phone with them when they came to Naga, so we couldn't just send off their replacements to the area because they didn't know how to get there. That's why I got all of those pictures from that far area, because we just ended up taking them out there. And I was surprised to see it was one of the prettiest places I have visited so far. Really awesome. The new missionaries seemed pretty great two, and the only problem we had there was there was a group of 6 missionaries taking a bus back to their areas about 4 hours away. Well about 45 minutes out of Naga, their bus broke down and they couldn't get any others to pick them up. So we made a surprise trip up to the Northern end of the mission to drop them all off. It was exhausting and we didn't get back until it was pretty late. Glad to help them out though.

We also had a few investigators at church, which is great. We are hoping to see them baptized this June. It was our ward conference and the stake president gave a good talk about saving the lost sheep that don't even realize they are lost. Sometimes they just slowly drift off and don't really know what is happening, so we have to be the ones to reach out to them. After the talk, our investigator came up to us and said "Thank you for rescuing me, Elders." So that was pretty cool. And then some couple I haven't met came up to us and the guy(who is a member) said "This is my girlfriend. She wants to be taught and to be baptized. When can you come over and begin the lessons?" So that was great getting a new investigator just like that. But we'll see how it goes.

Probably the most interesting part of the week was taking the departing missionaries home and seeing all of their reactions to their missions coming to an end. It's kind of an interesting chance to see what a mission meant to them as I talked with them and sometimes just observed. And that's what I've noticed with all of the missionaries we take to go home. Some are somewhat indifferent. Others are completely ecstatic and can't stop talking about how excited they are and inadvertently (or sometimes on purpose) try to make you jealous of them. And then there are always a few that seem to take it and see it differently. You can tell they are excited to go home and everything. But they are also sad to be leaving a place where they had so much growth and experience. These are the ones that I think have been deeply impacted by the mission. I just like talking with all of them and seeing their testimonies and what their thoughts are on going home.

Well hope you all have a great week. Love you all.

Hello again everyone! 

Hope you all had another great week! Ours was mostly packed with meetings and planning for the transfer that will be taking place tomorrow. We have 23 missionaries going home, and a bunch of the remaining missionaries will be transferring, which means we just had a ton of planning to get done! It took a lot of time and was pretty exhausting trying to get it all to work out, but we finally got it done. We also have half of our Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders going home, so we hoped to find some good leaders because the other half will be going home in July. It's going to be sad to see this group go, but I'm excited for them, and think they'll all do great. I have a lot of really good friends among them that I've been with for the whole mission.

We do have one new investigator that we are hoping will be baptized in June. Her name is Ian, and she is the daughter of one of the recent convert families in our area. She's 17 and just got back from working in Manila. She has a lot of great questions about God and the gospel, so our lessons so far have been pretty great. And she came to church already, so that was a bonus. As for Carlito, he's still making slow progress. He's remembering certain things better, but struggles with others. He's still coming to church, but we're still worried about the depth of testimony that would help him to not be offended and cease attending church. We ran out of time this past week to get to everyone, but I'm hoping once we are completely done with transfers by Wednesday, we will be able to put in some really good, full days of work in our area. We need it, and we have to do it to help prepare for a couple baptisms in June (hopefully).

Love you all, and have a great week!

So that was another week down. And luckily we didn't really get caught up too much with office stuff, so we just got to go out and work!

The week went pretty well for the most part with some of our investigators. Carlito is still slowly movin along, picking things here and there as we try to prepare him for a baptismal interview within the next month hopefully. We ran into a little bit of trouble with his family though. His uncle is a recent convert of about 8 months now, along with the rest of that family. And for the most part, they are really strong and faithful. The problem was that there was a fiesta in their place the other night, and we caught the dad drinking some, and then he didn't come to church the next day. Partly because he wanted to stay home and watch the Pacquiao fight (which by the way, is too bad. I was hopin Pacquiao would take it.) So now we have to reteach him the Word of Wisdom and hopefully get him back on track.

That was the weird thing yesterday. Everything was shut down for those couple hours of the Pacquiao fight. Nobody outside. Really quiet. Nothing was happening just because of the fight.

We have hopefully found some potential investigators to progress over the next couple months. we are still trying to fix some things up with the ward first, but we've seen some other great things happening with different recent converts of ours. They are always pretty up for sharing the Gospel, and giving out referrals, and we've been seeing some good things come out of that. This week should be pretty good too with our MLC and exchanges again. We have some good things we will be discussing. And then we will just move right into transfer planning next week. 

Well that was our week. Nothing too exciting, just got out and worked a lot! Love you and hope you all have a great week!

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